Work in the video coding space progressed,
following meetings taking place in Geneva in
April.

Also, the beginning of the month saw the Japan launch of
a new mobile terrestrial digital audio/video broadcasting service using H.264
and called "1seg". The video compression standard (full
name ITU-T Rec. H.264 or MPEG-4 pt.10/ AVC) jointly developed by ITU-T SG16 and
the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) is now being deployed in products from companies
including Apple, Sony, BT, France Telecom, Intel, Motorola, Nokia, Polycom,
Samsung, Tandberg and Toshiba and in services such as over-the-air broadcast
television, the new HD DVD and Blu Ray disc formats, and a large number of
deployments of direct-broadcast satellite-based television services.

In Geneva,
a new Recommendation was consented that will allow the use of a ‘back channel’
to convey the level of loss or corruption in video messages and if necessary
apply measures to compensate for that. So, for example, at the content delivery
end, an encoder, upon determining that a message is not getting through properly,
may decide to reduce the message to its bare essentials resulting in a
lower fidelity for the end user. Alternatively, the encoder
and decoder can deploy intelligent recovery mechanisms. This will better
support Recommendation H.264’s use in environments that may be more susceptible
to error, for example in mobile telephony and IP-based video conferencing.

The new Recommendation has been drafted in such
a way that it can be applied to existing (e.g. H.262, H.263, H,264) and
future video coding standards.

The work took place during co-located meetings
of the Joint Video Team (JVT) and ITU-T Study Group 16, home of media coding
work in the ITU. Over 90 documents were considered by the JVT group, which
is the ITU-T and ISO/IEC joint project to enhance standard video coding
performance, and is home to H.264/AVC.

An amendment to H.264 added support of
new extended-gamut colour spaces, which are recently-specified
enhanced methods of measuring and representing the brightness and color of the
objects in video pictures. Also, in relation to H.264, work continued
on developing new profiles supporting H.264’s use in high-end studio
applications that use the 4:4:4 color sampling system and on developing
scalable video coding (SVC) extensions of the standard as well.

ITU will take the lead in international standardization for IPTV with the announcement that it is to form a Focus Group on IPTV (IPTV FG).

The announcement, while acknowledging that standards work is ongoing in many different places, including ITU, is a reaction to an industry call for ITU to push forward and coordinate global standardization effort in the field.

IPTV is a system where a digital television service is delivered to consumers using the Internet protocol over a broadband connection. It will help pave the way for players, many of whom are already moving to IP-based NGN infrastructure, to offer a triple-play of video, voice and data.

Standards are necessary in order to give service providers, whether traditional broadcasters, ISPs or telecoms service providers, control over their platforms and their offerings. Standards here will encourage innovation, help mask the complexity of services, guarantee QoS, ensure interoperability and ultimately help players remain competitive.

The mission of IPTV FG is to coordinate and promote the development of global IPTV standards taking into account the existing work of the ITU study groups as well as SDOs, fora and consortia.

The group was launched following a decision taken at a public consultation meeting attended by around 120 experts from the world’s ICT companies. Attendees agreed that all players in the IPTV value chain will benefit from worldwide standards, that there is a lot of work to be done and that rapid progress is necessary in order to avoid market fragmentation. The Focus Group mechanism was seen as the most effective way of addressing this. Inputs to the meeting as well as a webcast can be found here.

Houlin Zhao, Director of the Telecommunication Standardization Bureau of ITU: “We have seen a desire to expedite and accelerate a global focus on standards for IPTV. There has been extraordinary consensus that ITU must lead this work and I am pleased that – again - ITU is seen as the right place to develop and harmonize this international standardization work, as well as identify and help fill gaps where there is still a standardization need.”

Bilel Jamoussi, Director Strategic Standards, Nortel, said: “Industry applauds ITU’s initiative to create this Focus Group and will contribute to its success.”

The FG will build upon existing work. Its scope will include architecture and requirements, QoS, security, network and control aspects, end system aspects – terminals etc., interoperability, middleware and application platforms.

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